Went in for chest and did basically high rep shaping exercises. My breaks where rather short and I started at 20 reps and went until I could only eek out 6 reps. All in all I would say and average of 9 to 12 working sets. I didn't count them, but MW was able to knock out 1050 reps on his full body work out in that two hours.

Anyway, eat time and making sure I stay focused during this new routine. The battle is going to be not trying to do more than is needed.

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Day 1 of the new routine. It only took me a touch over 30 mins to knock out 8x8@95lbs on the bench press. I focused on making sure the bar was on the rack evenly, that my head and feet placement was identical and that my hand placement was exactly the same way each time. I noticed that on the first set I was a little wobbly, so the next set I started to tighten up my whole body during each rep. That helped correct that. I didn't feel any fatigue, labored breath nor sweat. I probably won't until I get into the heavier weights. Right now my chest is sorta warm and under my right shoulder blade I feel a little tweaked nerve. I don't think the tweak has anything to do with my form or anything mechnical with the press. It's just something that will have to be worked out eventually.

When I started to leave the gym I felt as if it was a wasted trip, since I've got a Monster Bench at the house. Also since I had to suit up and drive to the gym. But realistically I'd rather stick with the exact same equipment all the way through this so as to not cheat myself when it comes to strength gains.

Anyway, only day one...so lets see how the week goes.

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Ok thought about it more during work and I am totally revising the routine. 30 mins just isn't gonna cut it, maybe if it was maintainence. Here is what it's going to look like, since I want to get a mix of mass building and shaping exercises in.

I want to get into inclined presses more as I noticed when I was starting to do them, my collar bone began to disappear. That and some cable cross overs is what I'm thinking about, Thanks for some ideas on building my routine.

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@VJ Awesome. All I know is my upper chest responded well as soon as I hit it and went heavy. I started off on the Hammer Strength machine and wouldn't be afraid to load it up and do partial contractions, just to feel the tension/load. Then I'd ease the weight down and work up to the new load.

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Back from a 30 min upperback routine that I am pretty happy about. I wasn't feeling out of breath, but I did end up breaking a sweat towards the last 20 pullups. I definitely felt muscle fatigue. I felt as if I could of gone another set, but I don't want to get into that mentality. If anything in a few weeks I will add rear delts on this day. In order to extend the workout and address that muscle group. For now, I just don't want aggravate my rotator.

I located the chart on the assisted pullup machine in order to get an idea of how much weight I was doing the pullup with. I weighed in with all my clothes and shoes, then went to work.

3m breaks5x10@184lbs3x10@172lbs

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Back from an 1h15m leg routine. I felt sorta good about it. I'm not too sure about my squat form towards the end. I felt a little awkwardness in my lowerback as if it wasn't staying as tight as I'd like past the sticking point. Who knows, it's something that I am going to be mindful of when I start increasing the weight.

Next week I am planning on increasing the resistance on the hams and going down to 12 reps. I was suprised that I couldn't get out 4 plates from the quad ext after the 8 sets of squats, so I only did 3 plates. As for the calf raises I plan on getting in another set just to bring that inline with the rest of the exercises.

Yesterday my lowerback was feeling sorta trashed so I took that morning off. I don't plan on doing lowerback this week, especially since it would be a quick 30 min thing.

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1h15m routine with MW. Ended up spending almost 3h there talking and bullshitting. Of course only after our routine.

Shoulders and biceps where the focus. My shoulders were done with just the bar and I defintely felt issues with my right rotator and the stabilizers involved. I am just going to readjust the weights from the data I recieved this first run. I didn't count my warmup sets as well as the smith machine stretches between sets. Just so that I could remind myself to stay tight and attempt to hit that plane. Also at the end of the shoulder routine I went on the smith and pumped out 6 reps with 2 plates.

In my goal to get to 230lbs, I changed up my workout routine to 3 days a week morning and after work at 1h30m sessions. And focusing on resting and eating big all week long. My employment schedule started to pick up, so I didn't get the type of calories in that I wanted to and was hovering at about 218-220lbs.

About three weeks in I started to develop a pain in my left glut that seemed very abnormal. I thought it was from overtraining legs, since I had been doing high rep squats at the beginning of the week and heavy squats towards the ending of the week in concert with deadlifts and lower back in the middle of the week. So under the advisement of MW I took 6 weeks off of training lower back and legs, just to heal the glut. Sure I wasn't happy about halting my leg training during a bulk since that was the focus, but I stayed off those two big movements.

After maybe 5 weeks and seeing my legs fill in from basically allowing them repair time, I noticed that the glut pain was linked to me standing too long during work. I mentioned it to MW and since she was going through rehab from two disk herniations, he demanded that I go to an ortho just to have it checked out. I scheduled a visit and everything from that point on progressed like a white water rapid. I went in for the checkup on a TUE, MRI on a WED, pre-op on a FRI and surgery SAT morning.

Here is the skinny, I go in for the checkup and immediately it's diagnosed as a disk herniation. I go in for the MRI and have it read the following day. The surgeon explained that it was an L5/S1 disk fault with herniation on the left side causing root sciatic irritation. It was fairly bad and cortisol shots weren't going to retract the herniation and surgery was my best option and that it needed to be addressed quickly.

So now I'm a little less than a week post op, with a check up at the 3 week mark and no lifting of any kind until the 6 week mark where we'll discuss my approach back into the gym. The great thing is my doc is a sports ortho who is keen to the type of gym routine I do and goals.

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